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The Quiet Shore

A boarding site: a colony that is fine, welcoming, and lying.

Declared by a landmark carrying `Site: quiet_shore`. Everything here is content - the cast that beams down, the call that arrives when you dock, and the beats they play. The engine side is `universe_sites.py` (the seam) and `universe_sites.mast` (the arrival); neither knows a word of what follows.

**Every role can reach TWO readings on its own, and the shed opens at `learned >= 3`.** Three is reachable by any crew because a short boarding party DOUBLES UP - one console speaks for several characters, so every role's readings are in play however many people are aboard. The two-per-role floor still matters: it is what keeps a reading worth taking rather than a duplicate of one already had. The first cut broke both rules at once - the engineer read `cold` in BOTH rooms and the science officer got nothing at all in the first, so before doubling up a single console could hold exactly one fact and the shed was unreachable, with the east cable looping between itself and the orchard forever. If a reading is moved, check that every role still reaches two DISTINCT facts.

**Every room is REVERSIBLE, not just exitable.** The east cable used to offer only two flavour loops and a gated shed, so a party that walked there under-informed could go back to nothing - the only way out was off the planet. A room whose options all loop is a dead end however many of them there are. Every room now leads BACK as well as on, and a gated `%{learned \< 3}` line says plainly that they have not found enough yet, rather than leaving the crew to guess whether the game is broken.

**Every room offers a way home.** The shed is the only scene that ENDS the visit on its own, and it is gated at `learned >= 3` - so without a `- [Beam back up]()` in each room a party that gathers two readings is stuck walking between them with no exit at all. That is what happened the first time this was played.

**The shape worth keeping.** Every room offers each character something only they can do, and nobody can take all four. A reading that matters carries `; learn \<name>`; the shed opens at `if learned >= 3`. Three of the four, so there is no single correct route through Ferrow Landing, and `learn` is a set - walking back into a room you have already read counts once. What is wrong with Ferrow Landing is legible only when the party puts its readings together and finds they do not agree - which is the whole reason this is played by four people at four consoles rather than one person with a menu.

Boarding Party

Dr Sorel

Fact Value
Face terran_female
Roles boarding, medical
Color "#4cf"

Ship's surgeon. Reads bodies, and does not much care what the paperwork says.

Chief Ruiz

Fact Value
Face terran_male
Roles boarding, engineering
Color "#fc4"

Engineer. Trusts machines further than the people running them.

Ensign Vale

Fact Value
Face terran_male
Roles boarding, security
Color "#f66"

Security. Reads rooms. Notices what is missing before what is there.

Lt Anders

Fact Value
Face terran_fluid
Roles boarding, science
Color "#8f8"

Science officer. Would rather be right slowly than first.

Voices

Administrator Bel

Fact Value
Face terran_female
Roles narrator
Color "#fd8"

Ferrow Landing's administrator. Delighted to see you. Has an answer ready for everything.

Hails

Ferrow Landing Answers

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel
Title Ferrow Landing
Color "#fd8"

One of:

  • Ferrow Landing here, and you are very welcome. We are all fine. Nothing needed, nothing to report.
  • We had a quiet year, that is all. You are welcome to come down and see the place if you have the time.
  • Assemble a boarding party (signal boarding_down)
  • Thank her and stay aboard

Scenes

The Landing Field

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Warm, still, and swept. Somebody has raked the gravel into lines this morning.
  • Eleven of us now. We manage. The children are at their lessons, so it is quieter than usual.

The People Meeting You

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Four adults, all well fed, all with the same faint tremor in the hands.
  • Not illness. Not cold. You have seen it in people who have not slept properly in a long time and have stopped mentioning it.

The Power Spur

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Rated for eleven, drawing for forty. Every one of those amps is going somewhere and it is not going into these buildings.
  • The cable heading east is the newest thing on this colony.

Counting The Doors

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Nine doors on the square, and every one of them opens inward and locks from the outside.
  • That is not how you build against weather.

The Last Supply Run

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Fourteen months, she says, and the manifest agrees with her.
  • What it also says is that they ordered nothing on it. Not one item. A colony that needs nothing is a colony that has stopped planning.

The Long Hall

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Tables for forty and eleven place settings, laid at the near end where the light is.
  • We keep it as it was. It seemed better than taking the rest away.

The Place Settings

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Eleven laid, and every one of them worn at the same corner by the same right-handed grip.
  • One person set all of these, every day, for a long time.

What Is Heating This Room

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Nothing is. The heat in here is coming through the east wall, from something on the other side of it that is running hot.
  • You could warm this hall on the waste alone, and nobody has thought to.

The Far End

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Dust on the tables, and no dust on the floor between them. That floor is walked every day and never sat at.
  • Something goes down this hall regularly. It does not stop to eat.

The Colony Register

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Forty one names. Eleven without a line through them, and the lines are all in the same hand and the same ink.
  • They were not crossed out as it happened. Somebody sat down one afternoon and did all thirty at once.

The East Cable

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • It runs a kilometre to a shed with no windows, and the shed is the warmest thing on this world.
  • That is the relay. It is not interesting. I would rather show you the orchard.
  • (if learned \< 3) She says it pleasantly and does not move. You have nothing to put to her yet - whatever is wrong with Ferrow Landing, you have not found enough of it to say out loud.

Asking Plainly

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • It is the relay.
  • She says it the same way both times, with the same pauses. You have heard a person say a true thing twice. This is not what that sounds like.

The Orchard

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Thirty saplings in rows, none of them older than a year, each with a stone at its foot.
  • We plant one for each of them. It is what we could think of.

The Shed

Fact Value
Speaker Administrator Bel

One of:

  • Thirty of them, warm, breathing, and asleep. The machine keeping them that way is drawing every spare amp on the colony and Bel is not stopping you looking at it.
  • We could not wake them. We could not bury them either. So we kept them, and we set their places, and we said we were fine.
  • She was not lying, exactly